It's starting up again this month! Now on to planning routes and contacting bakeries...

Hopefully the weather will cooperate!

Five good things for this week:

• last minutes plans and my parents are arriving for a visit next week!
• book club
• being able to walk past dogs with duke and not one howl
• being inspired by pugly pixel (and getting a lot of good resources)
• discovering gigi (thanks cbc radio 2)

I also have a special, 6th good thing.

On Monday, I biked up to my book club (a 10km ride one way). Things were great and I climbed the crazy hill on Poplar Plains Cres. After the dedicated bike lanes end, however, there is a part of the bike route that takes you through a park. The route is a bit rough here and the melting snow was starting to refreeze on the path.

I was being careful biking on the forming ice, but after being distracted by a cute beagle, I slipped and fell off my bike at the exit of the park. My basket fell off my bike and my bag that was in the basket fell into a puddle of ice water.

Cursing myself, I quickly put my basket back and angrily, tried to brush the water off of my bag. Then, I went over my bike for damage and after straightening my handle bars, I rushed back on my bike and sped off.

It wasn't until after my book club meeting that I realized my cell phone was missing. I checked the time on it while biking up so it should have been in my bag and with a sinking feeling, I realized it must have fallen out when I fell off my bike.

I cycled back to the scene of my accident with thoughts of hoping my phone would still be there interspersed with imagining a person finding my phone and promptly placing an ad on craiglist to sell it.

When I got back to the park, the phone, of course, was not there. A kind man even lent me his phone to call to see if we could hear the ringer. No luck. And I slowly and sadly rode home, thinking how 2011 was starting to become a really bad year.

I got home, sullenly told Andre about my fall and my missing phone and trudged upstairs to get ready for bed.

When I went to quickly checked my email, however, I discovered an email from a girl saying she had found my phone! She lived right by the park and was safe keeping it for me!!

Suddenly 2011 turned back around to being not as bad I was thought and my faith in Torontonians was restored.

3rd toronto girls' cupcake ride!

since my last cupcake ride report, my little facebook group has grown to 150+ now!

tonight on a bike month bike ride (andre and i participated in a west-end community gardens bike tour) i met a girl who saw the cupcake ride group back when there were only 6 members and decided not to join because she thought the group was created just for friends!

i gave her a promo card and asked her to join the group so that she can get details on our upcoming rides.

AND! in other exciting news, my friend has started a bay area cupcake ride as well! if you know of anyone in the san francisco, orinda or berkeley area, please send them the link!

an actual website is in the works and ms. sonya will be joining me in updating the site with cupcake ride news.

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so the 3rd cupcake ride is this sunday!!

sadly we had to push the date back to be on father's day, because of thundershower forecasts, but hopefully we'll still have girls come out for a long, but fun ride!

cupcake ride press!

wow! in less than 24 hours my little cupcake ride facebook group went from 16 to 54 members!

why?

we got some press in the toronto star!!

2nd cupcake ride report

all photos courtesy of malena andrade of activitybubble.ca. of course i forget my camera on this special day

yesterday was my 2nd cupcake ride!

i pushed back the initial date by a week due to rain and it's a good thing i did! because we sandwiched the cupcake around bells on a bloor a massive ride-parade that is held annually to try to get the city to build bike lanes on bloor st.

we started at hot oven bakery where we all gulped down some scrumptious cupcakes and chatted with toronto star reporter chantal.

sadly we missed the star photographer by just a few minutes and our photo op with the hot oven bakery cupcakes, so the bakery gave us a pack of 4 complimentary cupcakes to take with us to high park (the meeting spot for 'bells on bloor').

at high park we got some flags for the ride/parade and then the group of maybe 1000 cyclists hit bloor street and we rode slowly eastbound to queens park (ontario's legislative assembly).

the 'bells on bloor' part of the ride took probably around 1 hour - 1.5 hours. there were so many people out: hardcore race cyclists in their spandex; lots of mountain bikes; families in crazy tandem bikes (one was a 6 seater bike with a chariot trailer and a child's seat so the whole family of 8 could bike together!!); lots of cyclists that played instruments while riding!

after the rally at queen's park, the cupcake girls left 'bells on bloor' and headed up to dessertlady to finish off our ride, where we indulged in a red velvet cupcake with creamcheese icing, but also some super yummy sorbets and ice creams. mmmm, earl grey chocolate ice cream with pear sorbet .... mmmmmmm